27 oktober 2006

Om Lancetstudien innifrån Irak

Sedan Irakkrigets inledning har jag till och från följt bloggen Riverbend, funnen via Ali Esbatis länklista. Riverbend består av ständigt välskrivna texter, ibland med långa mellanrum, av en kvinna bosatt i Baghdad. Förstahandsperspektiv på ockupationen, våldet och kaoset med andra ord. Ofiltrerat. Oerhört nyttigt.

Efter ett oroväckande långt uppehåll ser jag nu att hon har skrivit igen. Den här gången om Lancetstudien, som tidigare berörts här. Hon skriver, ett sammandrag:
“The latest horror is the study published in the Lancet Journal concluding that over 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the war. Reading about it left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it sounded like a reasonable figure. It wasn't at all surprising. On the other hand, I so wanted it to be wrong. […] Thousands of Iraqis are dying every month- that is undeniable. And yes, they are dying as a direct result of the war and occupation (very few of them are actually dying of bliss, as war-supporters and Puppets would have you believe).

For American politicians and military personnel, playing dumb and talking about numbers of bodies in morgues and official statistics, etc, seems to be the latest tactic. But as any Iraqi knows, not every death is being reported. As for getting reliable numbers from the Ministry of Health or any other official Iraqi institution, that's about as probable as getting a coherent, grammatically correct sentence from George Bush- especially after the ministry was banned from giving out correct mortality numbers

There are Iraqi women who have not shed their black mourning robes since 2003 because each time the end of the proper mourning period comes around, some other relative dies and the countdown begins once again.”
Läs hela på Riverbend.

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